Trains and boats and planes … ev’ry time I see them I pray the trains and the boats and the planes will bring you back, back home to me.
Almost like the Burt Bacharach song, it took many modes of transportation to get several of the principals to Colorado in time for Friday night’s Denver Debutante Ball. Boats were the only exception.
With airports and roads closed because of the Holiday Blizzard, debutantes, post-debutantes, family members and friends found themselves doing whatever it took — even accepting the kindness of strangers — to get to the Brown Palace Hotel.Leslie Liedtke, whose daughter, Mimi, was presented at the 2005 ball and would be one of the 21 post-debs taking part in the 8 p.m. ceremony, prevailed on her father, who owns his own jet, to ferry Mimi and three others who attend school in the Michigan area to Denver. The trip was successful, with Mimi, fellow post-debAmy Craig; Peter Zarlengo, who was to escort his sister, post-deb Ali Zarlengo; and Jaime Latcham, whose sister, Keely Latcham, was one of the 29 debutantes, arriving in plenty of time for not just the presentation, but the 3 p.m. rehearsal.
While her brother was flying, Ali Zarlengo was in Colorado Springs with debutante Holly McHugh and post-deb Kelsey Smith waiting for I-25 to open so they could make the drive from Colorado College to their Denver-area homes.
Debutante Kedzie Schotters figured she could circumvent the airport closure by taking a bus from Washington University in St. Louis. But even that ambitious plan failed when the bus only made it part of the way before road closures dictated that Kedzie figure out a Plan B: taking a train. It got her as far as La Junta, where a family friend picked her up and gave her a lift to Denver, where her parents, Barney and Nancy Schotters, were waiting.
Post-debs Sarah Coxhead and Hilary Harrington, who attend college in San Diego, were in the middle of finals when they learned their flight to Denver had been canceled. So took the only alternative available: with a third friend to help with the driving, they hopped in their car on Thursday afternoon and drove nonstop to Denver, all the while hoping that the midnight blue, Duchess satin gowns that designer Kay Unger created for the post-debs in cooperation with Neiman Marcus would fit. That’s because there was no way they’d be making it to Denver in time for the final fitting.
Debutante Madeline Caudle,who is pre-med at Hamilton College, arrived home well ahead of the storm but, according to her mom, Louise Hurlbut, an ill-timed ski trip to Vail caused some anxious moments regarding her return to Denver.
The last time there was this much weather-related excitement for the ball was in the infamous Blizzard of ’72. “Fortunately, it didn’t start snowing until everyone had arrived at the Brown Palace,” recalled Barbara Knight, who was the 2006 ball’s honorary chairwoman. “It had been very cold, so the women were all wearing long underwear under their gowns, and the orchestra played in their parkas. And every time the front door of the hotel opened — it was a single, sliding-glass door at the time –another cold blast of air would come in.”
The ball also was affected by a blizzard in 1983; that year, bandleader Lester Lanin and his orchestra made it to Denver OK but were unable to return to their home base in New York for several days after.
That winter’s angry blast seemingly cannot stop a Denver Debutante Ball is a tribute to the fact that “This is such an experienced group,” Knight said. “I guess you could say we have the show-biz mentality of ‘The show must go on.’ ”
The Denver Debutante Ball began in 1956 as a benefit for what was then the Denver Symphony Orchestra. It has raised $4.5 million, according to founding chair Katie Stapleton.

Study after study has shown that when it comes to charitable fundraisers, Denver has more per capita than any comparably sized city in the nation. Joanne Davidson has been covering them for The Denver Post since 1985, coming here from her native California where she'd spent the previous seven years as San Francisco bureau chief for U.S. News & World Report magazine.